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Developing Leaders on Purpose

I met with a friend the other day who has chosen to invest in my life – I’m grateful for people like that. We talked a lot about leadership and the church, but the main focus of our conversation focused around developing people, with the intention of forming leaders; leaders who would lead others. I know it’s a concept that’s been a little overemphasized in books and on the blogosphere, but maybe not.

I’m at a place & position right now where my focus is on serving a staff that serves as the leadership of our church. I say ‘serving’ because I honestly believe that in order to be effective, I’ve got to view leading as serving, as doing whatever I can to empower and equip others to lead. There’s some great opportunities & challenges right now in our church for leadership development. And I’m in the process of learning, strategizing, and implementing ideas and structures to take our staff (which is anyone who serves at our church) to the next level – to be more effective at serving those who come to our church, and our community.

I’ll be blogging on some of the strategies and ideas soon, but today I’d love your help. One thing I came away with from this meeting was a challenge to ‘develop on purpose‘, and one way to do that is to have a list of values or tools that I want to be working through when spending time developing someone. Now for me, I know that each person is different and the things that work for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else. But I think knowing in your mind what a leader looks like, the disciplines they should have, the personal skills, etc. are one step in the right direction.

So when you think about developing a leader, what are the values that you would instill in them? Let’s say a list of 5-10 things?

I’ll get started with one: A leader’s attitude says a lot about them, so staying positive in the face of challenges & failures is key to leading others. Being honest about challenges, but looking for solutions rather than dwelling on the failures. This is one that I can struggle with, but it is something that my lead pastor has instilled in me and I’m thankful for that.

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3 thoughts on “Developing Leaders on Purpose”

1) Priorities – first priority must be their own passion and walk with God. Our leadership is primarily SPIRITUAL yet we so often do not lead out of the overflow of our own life in Christ. Frankly any true spiritual authority we have to lead others can only come from the authority and validity of our own walk/life.
2) Balance – taking care of family and self. This is one I learned after I almost burned out completely.
3) Serve and Love your congregation – this is the body God has called you to.
4) Model what you want to reproduce. (By the way, you WILL reproduce what you model, so you need to choose wisely and be intentional)
5) LEadership is all about relationship. Without relationship there is no influence.

Duplication and reproduction: (2 Timothy 2:2) How can a person duplicate what they know, do and value in others? That is the primary intentional focus I have.

– Skill: what I do
– Knowledge: what I know
– Values: why I do

The other issues of character and community come more organically for me. Really, its about believing in people and that they have a unique way they can lead and impact others. I think there is some messy nature to that.

1. Crazy love for people
2. Ability to clearly communicate (vision casting, teaching – one on one or groups, confrontation)
3. Integrity (able to follow through with commitments, has a good reputation with people for that reason)
4. As Rich said, the ability to DELEGATE, with the intention to REPLICATE
5. Servant (speaks to motives)
6. Humility

In organization development, we do an analysis (like what you’re doing now), then we set a map that says what skills/abilities/values we want people to have, and finally we DOCUMENT. As we find the values that are important, we arrange for folks to strategically gain those values/skills. Self-study (reading a book), group learning (staff-led internal training), conferences, and most importantly, one-on-one conversations.

I sent you a copy of a form we use a couple of months back, but many companies prepare an Individual Development Plan for their employees. Hope that helps!